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Thursday, August 27, 2009

Sock Summit highlights

I had a hard time adjusting to normal life after Sock Summit. There was a sense of unreality about the whole experience--I'd spent so many months thinking about it, working towards it, wondering how it would be, and then suddenly I was there and living it. And then it was over.

I've never been to anything like it. I think the experience was crystallized in the moment before the marketplace opened. Debbi (one of the organizers) was counting down the minutes. I think she announced there were 10 seconds before the doors opened, and all of us vendors screamed from the tension and exhilaration. This must be how Olympic athletes feel as the starting gun goes off--all that hard work and passion and striving, all leading to that single moment.

Then we heard an answering cry from the shoppers, as the doors opened and everyone surged in. It was absolutely amazing. I still get shivers up my spine, remembering it.

Thursday was perhaps the best day of the summit, just because you could feel the happiness and excitement in the air. Everyone was giddy. The joy was palpable. The closest thing that I've experienced was my wedding day, when guests started arriving. Friends from every different chapter in my life came, most from hundreds of miles away, just to celebrate with Michael and me. Sock Summit was like that, only the joy was more impersonal--which, in a way, made it more incredible. I had no connection with most of the people, yet I could feel how happy we were to see one another.

And the people that I did have a previous connection with--wow. I met people that I had known online for years, and it was like we had been friends forever. Especially Diane--I loved meeting her at last. And I really lucked out on my roommates, both of whom I liked immensely.

I originally named my Limitless colorway (one of my Dye for Glory entries) in part because I felt like my sense of possibilities had expanded enormously during prep for SS09. I left it out of my description on Ravelry because it felt sort of hokey to say, but now that I've actually been, and felt my horizons as a knitter, dyer, designer open up, I think I couldn't have picked a better name.